I believe that, whereas the force of culture propagates samemess (that is, normalcy ) with a numbing reliability, our duty as members of the civis is to counteract this cultural homogenization by developing and, equally importantly, by sharing, even celebrating, not our cultural sameness, but our individual difference. I call to your mind's eye a picture of humanity—and, included there, all of language, and, with that, all of reality—as an infinite array of centers, all in motion. I would, in fact, liken this array of "possibilities in motion" to the vast array of stars in the cosmos. Across the heavens, there is no first star, nor last, none leading the way, and none behind all the rest: they simply are, in motion. In one sense, they are all the same, in that each is a star, yet they are also all different, in that each is its own star.
So it goes, I propose, with human beings, with identities, with perspectives, with nations, ethnicities, speech communities, sexes, genders, institutions, words and meanings themselves, and, for present purposes, for participants in endeavours of teaching and learning. We are all stars (all-stars ?), coexisting, all in relation to each other and with, as our highest goal, the celebration of a multitude of centers, not a resolution of difference.Yet processes of social construction and also those of power imbalance can obscure difference—by homogenizing the talk—if we are not informed, mindful, and purposeful, in our practices as interlocutors, as talkers together, as members of not just the public, but of the citizenry :of the civis. And I believe that, as human beings entwined in the enterprise of education—both teaching and learning, at once—that there, especiallythere, as we develop and perform our civic identities, in talk. . . we both encounter and create the possibility for dialogue.
by Mike Zizzi
I believe that, whereas the force of culture propagates samemess (that is, normalcy ) with a numbing reliability, our duty as members of the civis is to counteract this cultural homogenization by developing and, equally importantly, by sharing, even celebrating, not our cultural sameness, but our individual difference.
I call to your mind's eye a picture of humanity—and, included there, all of language, and, with that, all of reality—as an infinite array of centers, all in motion. I would, in fact, liken this array of "possibilities in motion" to the vast array of stars in the cosmos.
Across the heavens, there is no first star, nor last, none leading the way, and none behind all the rest: they simply are, in motion. In one sense, they are all the same, in that each is a star, yet they are also all different, in that each is its own star.
So it goes, I propose, with human beings, with identities, with perspectives, with nations, ethnicities, speech communities, sexes, genders, institutions, words and meanings themselves, and, for present purposes, for participants in endeavours of teaching and learning.
We are all stars (all-stars ?), coexisting, all in relation to each other and with, as our highest goal, the celebration of a multitude of centers, not a resolution of difference.Yet processes of social construction and also those of power imbalance can obscure difference—by homogenizing the talk—if we are not informed, mindful, and purposeful, in our practices as interlocutors, as talkers together, as members of not just the public, but of the citizenry : of the civis.
And I believe that, as human beings entwined in the enterprise of education—both teaching and learning, at once—that there, especially there, as we develop and perform our civic identities, in talk. . . we both encounter and create the possibility for dialogue.